Through my own experience in fighting successfully against wrongful termination I have discovered that there are a lot of things that employees need to learn regarding the rights they have in dealing with situations like these. Most employees seem to believe that they don’t have any rights at all. What I have learnt is that that is not true.
It is true that most states allow at-will employment – that allows an employer to terminate an employee at any time. But the point is that the employers cannot be irresponsible about this and cannot just get rid of an employee simply because he or she was bringing up some difficult issues that needed to be handled properly.
In my specific example, I was bringing up issues that were affecting me personally and were also affecting the organization negatively. Then suddenly I was terminated – it was clear to see that they did that simply because they were not truly interested in handling the issues brought up by me. That is why it became a wrongful termination.
This is the main reason why documentation is extremely important. If there is a trail of documentation (prior to the termination) that shows that there have been some conflicts between the employee and the employer, then termination could be perceived as a wrongful act.
That is why good employers make sure that all complaints and issues brought up by employees are handled according to an established process.